With Syria destabilizing, number of refugees back to WW II levels

For the first time since World War II, the number of refugees thathave been forced to leave their homes because of violence orpersecution exceeds 50 million. During 2013, there were about 10.7million individuals who became new refugees. Fully half of the newrefugees were children, and the large preponderance were mothers andchildren.

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The top three countries producing new refugees in 2013 were:

Afghanistan – 2.56 million

Syria – 2.47 million

Somalia – 1.12 million

The top five countries that hosted refugees were:

Pakistan – 1.6 million

Iran – 857,400

Lebanon – 856,500

Jordan – 641,900

Turkey – 609,900

2013 saw multiple refugee crises, reaching levels not seen since the1994 Rwandan genocide. While there was only one major warcausing refugees in 1994, there were several in 2013: Syria,Afghanistan, South Sudan, and in Central African Republic.

The figures were in a new report by United Nations High Commissionerfor Refugees (UN refugee agency – UNHCR). António Guterres, the headof UNHCR, announced the report with a big dollop of wishful thinking:

Peace is today dangerously in deficit. Humanitarianscan help as a palliative, but political solutions are vitallyneeded. Without this, the alarming levels of conflict and the masssuffering that is reflected in these figures will continue.

The international community has to overcome its differences andfind solutions to the conflicts of today in South Sudan, Syria,Central African Republic and elsewhere. Non-traditional donorsneed to step up alongside traditional donors. As many people areforcibly displaced today as the entire populations ofmedium-to-large countries such as Colombia or Spain, South Africaor South Korea.

Guterres says that Europe, America, and other wealthy countries have anobligation to do more to help refugees escape from violence andpersecution.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, this worldwide surgein refugees is a sign that many countries of the world are becomingunstable in the generational Crisis era.

As an aside, the report says that there are additionally about 3.5million stateless people in the world, though they are not counted asrefugees. UNHCR

Ban Ki-moon says that Syria and Iraq are becoming unstable

The normally mild-manner U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressedanger on Friday at the situation in Syria. He blamed the conflict onSyria’s president Bashar al-Assad for launching the war againstpeaceful protester three years ago, and he criticized the SecurityCouncil and the international community for failing to do its duty and for risking the “cohesion and integrity” of Syria and Iraq:

Divisions within Syria, the region and internationalcommunity, even within the United Nations, and continued armsflows continue to fuel the conflict. These bleak prospects havedarkened further with a flare of violence and sectarian tensionsin Iraq. Suddenly the cohesion and integrity of two majorcountries, not just one, is in question.

The time is long past for the international community, inparticular the Security Council, to uphold its responsibilities,”he said in urging the U.N. council to impose an arms embargo onSyria.

Of course this is never going to happen, because Russia (along withIran) is a supporter of the genocide in Syria, and China sides withRussia because China is busy annexing other countries’ territories.

It’s interesting how the U.N. Security Council has evolvedsince the end of World War II. At that time, it was thought that theUNSC could maintain peace in the world. Its five permanent members –Britain, France, U.S., Russia, and China — had all been the targets ofpreemptive war by Germany and Japan. Since these five countries hadlearned such harsh lessons, it was thought that they would be the onesto guarantee that nothing like WWII ever happened again.

The ability of the UNSC to preserve peace has been eroding fordecades, but the real death for the UNSC was struck in 2011 byRussia’s president Vladimir Putin. As I’ve reported several times,has been to use the United Nations as a tool to control Barack Obamaand cripple American foreign policy, and he’s been spectacularlysuccessful since then. (“22-Apr-11 News — Russia seeks to cripple Nato through Libya United Nations politics”)

This has been a remarkable development. Instead of learning anylesson from WWII, Putin and Russia are leading the world intoa possible new world war and are preventing the UNSC from doing anythingabout it. In fact, the UNSC is now a tool to cause war, ratherthan a tool to prevent war.

This is just one more example of why people never learn the lessons ofhistory. VOA

Both America and Europe face floods of mother and child refugees

There’s been a great deal of news coverage recently of the flood of womenand children coming through the border with Mexico in order to remain inthe United States. Estimates are that between 60,000 and 80,000children without parents will cross the border in 2014. The huge sizeof this mass wave of children is a new phenomenon for which the borderpatrol is completely unprepared. Unlike adult male migrants, who tryto get into the U.S. without being spotted by a border guard, thesechildren run to the border guards, as they’ve been told thatunaccompanied children will not be deported. In many cases, theycarry with them the name and phone number of relatives or friends inthe U.S. They’re escaping violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and ElSalvador.

A similar phenomenon is happening in Europe. Some 43,000 migrants,many of them unattached children, cross the Mediterranean in shaky,unstable boats headed for Italy or Greece. Many of these childrendrown or have to be rescued by patrol ships sent out by Europeangovernments. These children are fleeing violence in Syria, SouthSudan, Central African Republic, and other countries.

These surges of child migrants into Europe, America, and elsewhere arehighly charged political issues and are a big part of the increasinginstability of the world that’s leading us into a possible new world war.CNN

Financial advisors taking kickbacks in addition to commissions

According to James Sanford of Sag Harbor Advisors, many financialadvisors take kickbacks from the companies whose mutual funds thatthey advise clients to invest in. In other words, if you’re paying afinancial advisor to tell you what you should invest in, he may beselecting the investments that bring him the largest kickbacks, ratherthan investments mostly likely to be good for you. This is unethical,or course, and probably illegal, but with Washington from the president on down perpetrating the greatest acts of corruption I’veseen in my lifetime, who cares what financial advisors are doing?CNBC